chez wrote:
That Velvia profile is way too over the top for my likings. That blue in the sky is just not natural.
The Velvia profile is not what's making this so saturated – it's the contrast, dehaze, and gradient mask white balance adjustments that I made.
Shooting at 5500' in the New Mexican high desert with thin air, near zero particulate matter, and extremely low humidity yields incredible sunsets with deep color saturation. None of the color profiles, even Velvia, render the colors with the intensity I see when I take these photos.
People who live in New Mexico understand the colors in my images. If you see sunsets here, "These colors can't be real!" is exactly what runs through your mind. And I can't scientifically prove it, but I believe that the memory of sunsets such as these are even more vivid – the feeling of the experience of it if you will. I can explain it really – it's something spiritual perhaps. This is why I push the color to the limits of good taste without (hopefully) breaking them.
The end result reminds me of the experience of the moment, and typically landscape photographers not working in this area don't get it. On the other hand, painters, artists, and others native to this area react positively to my work. I've lost count of the number of comments I've gotten expressing, "You're the first person's photos I've ever seen that truly show what a New Mexican sunset really looks like." While I know many other New Mexican photographers taking the same kind of photos, the point still is images like this strike a chord with the audience I'm trying to reach – perhaps the audience on this forum, not so much.
